The card read Timothy Lynch, and then a private cell phone number. “If I can ever be of service,” he’d said with a wink, slipping it into her hand as she passed him on the way out the door.

The card stock was heavy and the printing clean and sharp. Alexa took another sip of wine and dialed the mayor’s number. It was time to intervene. Operation Butterfly was a go.

Chapter 28
Operation Butterfly

The Mother of the Groom

The ruse was on. It was a sparkling September day, a snap in the air as if fall had decided to start that morning. Abigail could feel a frisson of excitement and intrigue as she and Sarah awaited the arrival of the private jet. Inside were the Merry Widows, Lloyd Chandra, and the corporate CEO stepson-in-law of Toots, a middle-aged man named Trey who spent the entire flight grilling the group on their plans, adding his own commentary and strategy and saying things like “Flood the zone” and “Fish where the fishes are.”

The Connecticut duo waited on the tarmac as they watched the plane land, like billionaires in a movie, an exhilarating experience. Abigail sat in the passenger seat of the van that Sarah had commandeered from the coach of a club lacrosse team in Fair Harbor. It wasn’t the luxury Mercedes coach that the Montecito contingent was accustomed to boarding on their travels, but it was clean, odor-free, and stocked with kombucha and snacks.

Sarah was behind the wheel. The next destination was Manhattan, where the Merry Widows would stay for the weekend. Operation Butterfly was underway, a multiborough plan that involved a mayor, an English lord, and the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, plus a cadre of wealthy widows from California, a handful of Daughters of the American Revolution from Connecticut, and the staff of the senior center—all in service of love.

The plan, conceived by the MOG and the MOB, was to lure Penny and Chase to the Noguchi Museum in Queens for a romantic tête-à-tête that would lead to a reconciliation and then the restoration of the wedding date. Abigail and Alexa had picked the museum in Queens on purpose, a symbolic offering of support for their new life together in a new place. Even if that place was Queens.

It was Toots who insisted the Widows be part of the plan, acting as shills to get Penny on board. Penny had been told that this was a sanctioned MW Trip and that the group was on an art weekend in New York. Even though she was still ghosting her mother, she agreed to accompany them to the museum for what she had been told was a private tour of the collection with dinner afterward. (Penny couldn’t say no to Toots.)